until we close our eyes for good
by aero-breaking
Summary: Ochako is being haunted by her werewolf ex-boyfriend. And ok, fine, she'll take responsibility since she's the one who killed him.


**enjoy and please comment! **

**ps. thank you to all that reviewed my other story, _dancing on wires. _**

* * *

First and furthermost, Ochako would like to let the council know that it was an _accident._

Ok, so maybe she shouldn't have been messing around with forbidden spells, but it was Katsuki's fault for barging into her apartment at 12:58 PM. Especially since the last time he even bothered to speak to her was nine _months _ago. So yeah, not her fault. Entirely.

She has to give credit where credit is due. Deku, bless his humble heart, doesn't immediately faint when she calls and frantically tells him the news.

Her opening line, as soon as he picks up is: "I killed Katsuki.

Her friend lets out a huff of laughter, "Finally?"

"No. Deku. I mean—I—I mean really killed him. Like dead. _Dead, dead_. Well—not really. It's complicated but dead enough that his soul is out of his body. So _technically _he's dead but you know those are just details."

Deku must finally get the picture because he screeches, "HOW?"

"Okay so," She starts, " I—well, I was practicing some stuff. And then he shows up, out of nowhere mind you, in the middle of the night and he got caught in the spell and now he's-he's floating in my living room."

"What type of stuff were you even doing?"

She laughs nervously, "Hahaha...uh, some...you know maybe some...forbidden magic."

There's a pregnant pause on the other end of the line before she hears a loud thud.

"Uhhh, Deku? You there?"

She hears in the background a muffled, "I cannot believe!"

She can almost see him in her mind's eye, his body sprawled out on the floor as his soul floats above him, trying to hold on to something to keep him anchored.

A long moment passes and she hears a couple of curses before Deku comes back on the line.

"Ochako," He says, with calm anger only Deku can muster, "I'll be there in ten minutes."

And uggghhh, the lecture she's going to get.

* * *

Izuku looks between the two imbeciles that he calls friends with annoyance.

"So what you're saying is: that Kacchan came in just when you casted the spell. And he fell."

She nods, while Katsuki floats above them not in the mood to comment.

"He fell." Deku repeats, slowly, "In a pot." His eyes zero in on Ochako, "_Accidentally?_"

"Yes," Ochako nods, trying to seem convincing. "Accidentally."

Izuku closes his eyes and takes a deep steadying breath. "Has he tried slipping back into it?"

"Yeah, but he's not like you."

Katsuki's body is laying on the kitchen table, his long legs dangling and his arms on his sides. His body is cold but breathing and unresponsive. So he's dead...and dying.

"What exactly were you trying to do?" Deku asks, his voice strained.

She giggles anxiously, her gaze flickering to Katsuki's angry looking soul and away, "So I was...trying—trying my hand at some...binding spells."

"Uh-huh?" Deku presses on, wanting more clarification.

"Oh, you know, just some..." She looks at the ceiling trying to avoid looking at both of them, "Soul bonding spells."

Katsuki makes a noise somewhere between a choke and a growl, "Who the _fuck _were you trying to _soul bond _to?!"

"No one!" She exclaims, going on the defensive.

"Then why the seven hells were you doing this spell then?"

"For science."

"Oh go fuck yourself! Who was it?"

"I'm not _lying!_" She says forcefully, "And even if I was binding myself to someone I wouldn't have to explain it to _you." _She spits the last word with as much venom as she can.

"That's some bullshit!"

"Ok. Ok," Deku tries to intervene, "Calm down!"

"Fuck off Deku! This is between me and this bitch."

"Don't talk to him like that!"

"I can talk to him however the fuck I want!"

"You are _such _an entitled asshole!"

"Guys, stop!"

"No! Who was it, Ochako? _Who fucking was it_?"

"Shut up!" She screams losing her patience, "Shut the fuck up! _You_ don't get any say in what I do or don't do with my life." Ochako clenches her fists, trying to keep from hurling a pot at an incorporeal being, tears of shame gather behind her eyes. "Just _leave._" _Like you did last time_. Is what remains unspoken but heavy in the air.

Katsuki gives her a withering glare but finally relents, "Fine."

He fades away from view with a fierce scowl.

"Huh," Izuku mumbles, "It took me forever to be able to do that."

Ochako smiles tentatively. Katsuki is probably just in another room, quietly fuming, but for now that's enough. He can't be too far away from his body, anyway. She'll fix him. She will and then she can finally break away from him.

"So what where the ingredients you used?"

Ochako clears her throat and hands him the spell book, "To be honest, I don't know where I went wrong, I followed every step perfectly."

Izuku looks over the page and reads off the ingredients list, "Saffron, Malayan tail, great shark tooth with skin, vampire blood, fairy nails, werewolf hair, banshee scream, bottled is fine. Silver fairy dust, demon ear." As his eyes travel over the extensive ingredient list his voice becomes more and more incredulous, "Ochako these are _expensive_."

She sniffs, "Well, nothing forbidden is cheap."

"Is this what you've been doing? These past few months? Gathering all this up?"

She nods. She had been traveling extensively for the past four months. Going from one side of the world to the other constantly, sneaking into the most dangerous markets and dealing with the most heinous of traders to get these ingredients. Her friends, she knows, have been worried. Especially since she didn't really mention what she was up to. In the past four months, she had seen Izuku once and only in passing.

She had been too busy. The hay in her broom had begun to deteriorate and even the wood was splintering, when all this was done, she would have to buy a new one.

Her little potions shop had been closed in the time she was gone and she'd used a large chunk of her savings to accomplish this project.

Izuku looks at her, "So," He asks casually, trying to not poke the sleeping giant, probably, "What were you planning on doing...exactly?"

Tears well up behind her eyes again, "I just wanted to prove it to myself that I could do it."

It's not a complete lie, but. It's not the whole truth either.

Izuku hums, "You're one of the greatest witches of our time; you didn't have to do this to prove it."

"Yeah," She laughs bitterly, "So why did I mess up this badly?"

He presses his lips together in a tight line.

She runs a hand through her hair, "I have to figure out a way to fix this." She looks over at Katsuki's body, his lips are blue. "His body can't stay in that state too long. He's really going to die if I don't fix him."

Izuku nods, "I'll talk to All Might and see what we can find out." He looks hesitantly around the room. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to stay here. Retrace my steps, see what I did wrong. And," She looks at Katsuki's body, "I have to find a way to preserve him."

"Right," He stands up, "Well...I'm going to go. Call me if anything happens."

She nods and with one last wave, Izuku walks leaves into the night.

Ochako gets to work immediately. There's no time to sit around and think. She has to _do. _Her apartment isn't all that big, so she has to move around all the furniture to make room for the container she's going to summon. She takes her wand and quietly murmurs the spell. Slowly, the large, rectangular glass box surges from the floor. She fills it half way up with water.

Now to the hard part.

She has not touched Katsuki in nine months and when she runs her fingers up his arm, he's ice cold. He's no longer that warm, almost burning temperature that Ochako had loved to cling to so much. She's going to have to drag his dead weight into the container.

The task is as daunting as it sounds. Katsuki is large, his muscles solid, and he's _heavy. _She thinks to herself, _Damn this large lump of dumbass. _Ok, this is what she has to do: just carry him to the container. It's not even a foot away. It should be easy. _Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. _Totally doable.

She hopes Katsuki isn't watching her struggle. She doesn't have the heart to deal with his scorn.

The easiest thing to do would be to sit his body up on the table and then from there piggyback him and dump him in the container. But its a damned struggle just getting him to sit up without toppling over to one side. _Damn. Damn, _she thinks, _I should've asked Deku to help me._

She finally manages to sit him up. She swings his arms over her shoulders and grabs his thighs. She slots herself into him and it reminds her of the many times Katsuki had hugged her from behind. Her breath catches in her throat, _he's so cold._

_Yeah, _her mind unhelpfully supplies, _he's dying, remember?_

No time. Now is not the time to think about her major fuck up.

She bends her knees and Katsuki's head lolls into her shoulder.

This is going to kill her back but she finally lifts him off the table and wow, _she's _going to die. She takes a careful step forward. One foot in front of the other and the theory of relativity has never been truer.

These seconds that are passing with Katsuki's cold body pressed up against her back are as long and painful as the cold she's felt in her chest in the past nine months.

There's not much she can do about it so she lets his body fall into the container inelegantly. She winces at the loud thump. He lands in a heap of limbs and it's a miracle he didn't break his cranium. Its a good thing werewolves have strong bones.

She arranges his body carefully as she casts a warming spell on the water, then to further help to keep him warm she places Pyro flowers around him. Cruelly she thinks she should've just dumped him in formaldehyde. But alas.

Looking at him now, his eyes closed, his lips blue, surrounded by red flowers, he really _does_ look dead. She tears her eyes away.

She groans, rolling her shoulders, they're sore and strained. She wants nothing but to go to her bed and lay down and sleep, but instead, she takes her spell book and a notebook, sits on her couch and begins to recall everything she did from the moment she started mixing the ingredients.

* * *

At some point, she must have fallen asleep because when Ochako wakes up, she's greeted with the sight of Katsuki hovering above her. He's looking down at her, arms crossed, looking as though someone pulled his tail too hard.

"Ughhh," Ochako brings her hands to her face, "I was hoping it was a nightmare."

"Well too-fucking-bad." Says the apparition, personally offended.

She turns to her side, pulling a cushion over her face. She doesn't want to deal with this, not right now, not so early in the morning. But alas, one can only run away from the realities of life for so long.

She sits up and immediately regrets it. Pain shoots up her lower back like lightning and she barely manages to suppress the groan of pain that wants to escape her lips. Carrying Katsuki's dead weight combined with sleeping in an uncomfortable couch finally catches up with her. She resists the urge to flop back down and slowly brings herself up to her feet.

Katsuki has been watching her the whole time, not saying anything. And what a damned surprise that is. She was almost expecting him to let out some sarcastic comment that would surely blow her fuse. Instead, he floats away and hovers over his body looking down at it with a peculiar expression on his face.

She can only guess what he's thinking.

She's hungry but there's no time for eating. Instead, she rolls her head, stretches her shoulders and goes to check on Katsuki's body. She takes his hand and while not as cold as he was the night before, his fingertips are red. She gives his hand a squeeze, promising herself once again that she would fix him.

She gathers her things again and sets them on the kitchen table and gets to work.

"Shouldn't you eat something?" Katsuki asks, coming to hover over her materials.

She waves him away, "I'll eat later."

For the next twelve hours, she barely moves from her spot. She only takes bathroom breaks and drinks water and munches on crackers. As she writes and researches in books and the internet she barely notices that she's been gnawing at her nails the entire time. Katsuki thankfully makes himself scarce.

At around nine Katsuki asks again, "Aren't you going to eat?"

"Later." She answers, too absorbed in her research.

She gets the feeling that he wants to argue more but for whatever reason decides against it. It isn't until an hour later when she can barely stand blinking her burning eyes that she pulls away from the books and papers. She massages her temples, flinching when the tips of her fingers hurt. She looks at her nails and sees that she'd worn them down so much they were bleeding.

_Huh, _she thinks absentmindedly, _haven't done that in a while._

Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees movement and she lifts up her gaze to see Katsuki looking at her. Something strange in his red eyes.

Her traitorous heart gives a stutter, "How long have you been watching me?"

He looks pensive before looking at the clock on the wall, "Going on fourteen hours now."

Ochako hears the disapproval in his voice. Something like sadness wants to rise from her gut. His disapproval, his concern is misplaced. He shouldn't be worried over someone he left behind without so much as a goodbye. It hasn't even been a year, so the sting of despair, of absolute hurt, is still there.

She still remembers it, as if had only happened yesterday. They had argued again about Katsuki marking her and he had refused to do it. They had been together seven years already and when she had brought it up he had said, voice cruel, _seven years is _nothing.

He had basically refused her proposal and the rejection had _stung_. But then, what was the point? What was the point of staying together if he didn't want what she wanted?

He'd left in the early hours of the morning and since then she hadn't seen him until he came barreling into her cauldron. In the weeks following his departure, she had refused to cry. Even now, she still hadn't, if she cried it would be like saying she cared. She wanted to be as cold as him. Seven years _was nothing._

Her cellphone breaks her out of her thoughts. She quickly reaches for it and when she sees the name she lets out a sigh of relief, it was Izuku.

"Hello," She says bringing the phone up to her ear.

"Hey! Ochako! I think I got it!"

Her breath almost leaves her body, "Re-really?"

"Yeah, listen—so. I talked to All Might and he talked to his mentor and she said that maybe the werewolf hair you used wasn't the right one. Apparently, the spell requires fresh hair." He makes a pause, "I'm guessing you must have used...months old hair."

She chokes, "Yea-yeah. It-it was pretty old."

"Ok, so you're going to have to perform the spell again, this time biding Kacchan's soul to his body so we're going to go ahead and start looking for all the ingredients."

"Wa-wait! I still have some stuff left!"

"Oh yay!" Deku cheers, "Text me what you need! I'll get it!"

She starts scavenging around the piles and piles of paper for her notebook. "Uh...uh wait, give me a sec." She swipes away the unnecessary books, "I think I'm only missing two things." She finally manages to find it, and her heart leaps in joy, "Ok-ok I need some vampire blood and—and—" her heart plummets, "Silver fairy dust..." She finishes off in a whisper.

Silver fairy dust was one of the rarest things to find in this world. Even with all the money in the world. There were something that were priceless, so something of equal value had to be paid for it. Ochako had only managed to come across it because she had pulled in every favor she had ever been owed by other traders. And even then the person she traded with had asked something of hers that, even now, she aches at its loss.

She almost loses her balance but she manages to flop into the chair. She wants to cry again. "Izuku...silver fairy dust—I don't think you're going to be able to get it..."

"What? Why not?"

Katsuki is hovering directly above the table, his eyes trained on her, she slowly speaks into the phone. "I paid a heavy price for it. It's not easy to come by. Last time—last time I traded something for it but I don't have anything to exchange for that type of thing again."

Her ex-boyfriend frowns down at her almost at the same time she hears Deku take in a shocked breath. "Ochako-Ochako _please, please _tell me you didn't pay with what I think you did."

She remains quiet, her eyes on the ceiling, and she speaks, "Yeah. Yeah."

"Ochako," Katsuki says, dangerously, everything clicking in his head "Ochako. You better not have—"

For the first time since he arrived yesterday and this whole mess started, Ochako looks into Katsuki's beautiful eyes, "My egg. I traded my egg for it."

* * *

In a world were magical, mostly immortal, beings lived there had to be severe population control. Most species regulated their reproduction levels to a mere one or two per year and only if one of the already existing beings had died. But witches, the species with the shortest lifespan, raging from 100 to 150 years, were allowed one child, one egg, per person.

She had gotten her egg at sixteen. She had...given birth to it. It had been small and translucent, fitting in the palm of her hand. One day she, along with the person she loved the most, would make a child out of it. For a long time, she had thought it would be Katsuki. She would have a beautiful red-eyed, blond-haired child with her smile and his smarts.

She would have taught that child everything she knows and she would have raised them with love and adoration because it would have been her's and Katsuki's.

But Katsuki had left.

And Ochako had _really _wanted that silver hairy dust for her spell.

She knows it had been stupid—foolish, ridiculous, idiotic, absurd, imbecilic—any fucking word of the dictionary anyone wanted to use. But at the time, she had been consumed with hurt and pain and all she wanted was to make it go away.

She was going to use the spell to bind her soul to the universe. She was going to leave this body behind and become part of the stars and the burning embers of fires. She wouldn't have pain anymore, she would be one with the flow of time and she'd be rid of everything. Many of her kind had done it, because it was the only way to live on, forever. Separated from a decaying body and dispersed among the atoms that structured the world as she knew it.

"I can't believe you're _this fucking stupid,_" Katsuki rages on. He's been like this since the moment she hung up on Deku. She doesn't remember a time when he had been this angry, and that's saying a lot.

She tunes him out mostly, but some of his words do register in her head. She has her head down on the table, "Just shut up," She says quietly, "You're giving me a headache."

"OH! OH, well fucking _sorry _for inconveniencing you!" He continues on and on and _on_.

She rolls her eyes and gets up, "Where do you think you're going?!" He asks, following behind her. She doesn't answer him and walks up to the container where Katsuki's body rest lifelessly. The water and flowers had turned cold already so she casts the warming spell again and replaces the Pyro flowers.

She takes his hand in hers, and from the tips of his fingers to his knuckles, the skin is an alarming purple. She takes his pulse and his heart has slowed down to a mere beat per minute. Any longer than a day and she's going to lose him.

She's really, really going to lose him.

Ochako can't allow that.

"I'll fix you," She tells him. Deku had been angry and upset, but with the number of people he knew, he promised to get her the silver fairy dust by the morning.

Katsuki chokes back his tirade when he finally sees the tears streaming down her face.

"I'll fix you," She repeats, _promises, _"You'll be okay by sunrise."

"I don't even care about that," He says, finally resigned, "You traded your egg. Your _egg_, And for what? _Nothing_."

Ochako can't help it, she sobs. She lowers Katsuki's hand back into the water, afraid that if she keeps holding on to it for longer will cause him to get colder.

"Why did you come back?" She asks, wiping away her tears and trying to control her breathing. "What were you here for?"

He sighs deeply, "I'd heard rumors about a witch with your description dealing with Overhaul, Shigaraki, and All For One. I thought, it cant be. It just _can't. _But I had to make sure and imagine my surprise when it really _was _you."

She snorts, wetly and unattractive. Ochako goes to sit on the couch bringing her knees to her chest. She's ashamed of all what she's done and all she's put Deku and Katsuki through. Once this was all over she would apologize properly.

"Hey," Katsuki says, trying to sit next to her but failing, "I'll get your egg back."

She laughs, "The deal is done."

"Yeah well fuck the deal, I'll get it back."

Ochako stays quiet, deciding that it's better to not tell him just how wrong he is.

"So why'd you do it?" He asks, done with skirting around the topic.

Ochako would like to lie to him, tell him it had nothing at all to do with him and everything to do with what _she _wanted. But she can't lie to him anymore.

"I just _missed _you." Her voice cracks pitifully and she's so, so ashamed, "I missed you and you were gone for so long. I love you. When I proposed and you refused my heart broke and then you _left. _Without saying anything.

"As the weeks passed I fell more and more into despair and I thought this was the only way. The only way to make it stop. For the past nine months, there has been a ringing in my ears so loud that I haven't even been able to sleep. And the sting of rejection has been skewing my senses and my thoughts." Her voice is barely understandable through her sobs.

Katsuki looks pained, "I-I thought you would be fine."

Ochako shakes her head. "You said our time together was nothing."

"You're young," He says, finally after a long moment of silence. "Ochako you're barely _twenty four. _I'm halfway through my second century. I thought—I hoped that our time apart would make you realize that I might—I might not be forever for you."

"You don't understand," She says burying her face in her knees, "In my cards, in my fortunes, it has only ever been you. I saw it so clearly," She chokes, "I saw my egg—saw it become _something_. When you left, my fortunes were empty, my egg turned into a blob of nothing and the only thing I could see was the uncertainty of being without you."

He shakes his head, "I can't—I can't—I'm sorry I can't believe in a future I can't see. I'm not like you or Deku that believes so—so easy and so effortlessly. You'd have to have known that."

"I did, but I thought that if I convinced you, proved it to you, then you would believe in the future I saw too."

Katsuki bites his lip and says nothing after that.

* * *

Later on, at around three o'clock in the morning, when all her tears are dry, Deku comes bursting through her door, vampire blood and silver fairy dust in hand. He takes one look at her face and thankfully chooses to say absolutely nothing.

She begins the spell, all her ingredients laid neatly out on the table. This time, she carefully clips the werewolf hair off of Katsuki's head.

Deku and Katsuki's soul watch on, as she moves around pouring everything into her cauldron until the mixture is a deep teal and boiling hotly. With Deku here, they're able to easily transfer Katsuki's body into the large pot, instantly his skin regains color and his lips are no longer blue.

"Ok," She says to the incorporeal being, "You can enter the pot too now."

He gives her one last look. And though she has known him for a long, long time she can't decipher it.

She holds true to her promise; by sunrise, Katsuki is living again.

Living and gone.

* * *

Ochako decides, about a month after the incident, that she should move. There are too many memories of Katsuki here.

So she begins looking for an apartment and finds one in the next town over. It's not going to be easy, so she begins moving her stuff about a month before her lease is up. She asks Deku and Iida for help and though she knows they want to comment on her decision, they keep their opinions to themselves.

Her little shop has been closed for a while now but she sends letters of apologies to her regular customers and informs them off the new location where they will be able to find her. She's managed to snag a little space in the Musutafu market out of sheer luck and tenaciousness.

After weeks of transferring furniture, books and papers, and potions and vials from one place to another, finally, her apartment is bare except for her cauldron. That last day there she cleans it spotless. Its nearing midnight when there's a knock on her door.

She's not expecting anyone so she's wary when goes to open the door.

On the other side, shuffling from one foot to another in a nervous tick, is Katsuki.

"Oh," She says, "Hi."

"There's—There's something I have to tell you."

She nods, "Ok. Uhhh," she looks behind her at her empty place, "Come in, but you're going to have to stand."

Ochako opens the door fully and lets him in.

He takes in the bare place and grimaces.

The trash has all been picked up so there's nothing for her to do. So she leans against the wall and waits.

The blond meets her eyes without hesitation. "I love you." He says, without preamble, "I love you and I'm an asshole for hurting you. In seven years I have given myself to you more than I have given myself to anyone in a century. I—fuck. Ochako, I'm not good with words but I know, _I know, _I love you and I'm sorry."

She doesn't really know what to say, so she says nothing. Katsuki must think she's finally reached her limit because he deflates, "Here," He says, and it isn't until he extends his hand to her that she realizes he's holding something in his fist. "I got it back for you."

He holds his palm out, cradling her beautiful, translucent egg to her. It looks so much smaller and fragile in his large hand. She reaches for it with trembling fingers. When she touches it behind her eyelids there is an explosion of colors.

Giddiness rushes up her body, she can see it. _She can see it._ The way her egg takes form, takes shape, into something so clearly in her mind. Katsuki must see it too because he blinks rapidly, tears clinging to his eyelashes, "_Holy fucking shit._"

"Yeah," Ochako says, laughing, "Yeah."

They hold the egg between them and their uncertain future clears up before them.


End file.
